Simon Yu won easily Saturday night to become the next mayor of Prince George but the work starts now. Once he moves into the mayor’s corner office on the fifth floor of city hall next month, he’ll find the issues stacked up, all demanding close attention.
The first task, however, will be to form working relationships with a group of experienced incumbents and the three other new faces at the table. He can’t expect too much to change, considering five of the councillors are incumbents.
To no one’s surprise, Brian Skakun topped the polls for city council again. With Murry Krause have retired from local politics, Skakun now finds himself the senior hand at the table with his fifth different mayor. Both the new mayor and the new faces will be looking to him for the experience and the background knowledge as they acquaint themselves with ins and out of municipal government policy.
Lots of chatter about change heading into this election but it really didn’t happen.
Garth Frizzell didn’t pay a political price for chairing the city’s finance and audit committee during the George Street Parkade fiasco or for running last fall as a Justin Trudeau federal Liberal against Cariboo-Prince George Conservative incumbent Todd Doherty. He easily won re-election. Cori Ramsay, another member of that finance and audit committee, handily won back her seat.
Kyle Sampson mobilized his supporters and got them out to vote. So did Susan Scott. Although she finished eighth, she was well ahead of ninth place Wesley Mitchell.
The new faces aren’t so new.
Tim Bennett and Ron Polillo are new to city council, coming over from the School District 57 board. Polillo only served one four-year term there while Bennett was there for 11 years. City hall is a different beast than school district but their experience dealing with a large bureaucracy and the provincial government should come in handy.
The least familiar winner is Trudy Klassen. She’s well-known to Citizen readers as a regular columnist and she ran in 2018 for school board but didn’t get in.
Four new faces, one of them in the mayor’s chair, mixed in with five incumbents means some interesting days ahead for Prince George city council.
Editor-in-chief Neil Godbout
